Dire Peril
Queen of the Galaxy

Dire Peril’s second EP seems to be one of sexy sci-fi power metal. Queen of the Galaxy is the name of this four-track EP, I thought the queen of the galaxy was the Borg queen and not the one on this cover art. But what do I know? I know that this EP has been fairly well reviewed and some compare the band with Iced Earth and such. One reviewer even claimed it was a unique brand of power metal, sci-fi power metal. I guess he forgot about a number of European power metal bands like Scanner or Iron Savior just to name a pair. If it is in these band’s vein I would be very interested.

But it is more in the vein of the american power metal like Iced Earth’s brand of music, with some more melodic touches of the European school of the genre. Female guest vocals play a prominent role in the third track. The regular singer sounds very american in his vocal delivery and I would say that he is a pretty decent singer. The four tracks of the EP plays for twenty minutes and it has decent variation due to quite different characteristics of the songs where one is a cover of the great band Boston who has some sci-fi looking cover arts in their catalogue. Solid production, quite typical of the genre and the time it was recorded. No surprises on the stylistic front either, it is fairly typical power metal of the american school.

Pretty good. Nothing brilliant on this EP, it is a good listen and you can play it twice back to back to get an album playing time and it doesn’t get boring. At the same time the tracks never really take off to achieve warp speed and they are lightyears behind the warp 7 of Scanner or the adventures of Iron Savior. The Germans far outclass the americans in this regard. But don’t dismiss them, you should look them up if you are a fan of the american school of power metal, if bands like Iced Earth are amongst your favourites.

It is solid and the opening track is very good but I more feel like it is a good sign for the future rather than something that really blows me away. I believe I can see some great potential but we still have to wait to see what they can achieve when they really blossom. Queen of the Galaxy is quite okay but nothing that leaves a lasting impression, a twenty minute distraction to pass some time at work or something like that.

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